Spring 2014 Graduate Course Descriptions – Art History
ARTH 602 Research Methods: The Modern “Masterpiece” in Latin America
Lynda Klich
Wednesdays 4:00 – 6:40 pm
Students will learn to research an art object in depth and compose a comprehensive
catalogue entry in two parts. The first is full factual documentation (provenance,
exhibition history, and bibliography); the second is a detailed interpretative essay (15-18
pages) on all aspects of the work, written in a publishable, expository style. The course
provides fundamental training for academic and curatorial work by emphasizing
foundational tools and means of research in the field. It also offers pragmatic instruction
in determining appropriate theoretical frameworks and viable methods of critical
interpretation. Strategies for writing—the organization of information, the clear
articulation of ideas, logical structure of argument, and developing an authoritative
voice—will be stressed.
The course will focus on the role of the so-called masterpiece in the development of
modernism in Latin America. Students will be assigned individual works of art from New
York collections and will have the opportunity to contribute new research and analysis.
There will be instructional sessions in museums and libraries, working with professional
staff in order to master searches in both print and electronic media. Students will also
learn by doing through a series of technical tasks involving information retrieval and
analysis pertinent to their objects. The seminar covers a variety of issues and
methodologies, with an emphasis on recent approaches to Latin American art history. In
addition to the final catalogue entry and weekly tasks, students will give a class
presentation on the progress and problems in their research.
ARTH 620
Roman Art
Hendrik Dey
Tuesdays 7:00 – 9:40 pm
In this course we will explore the material culture of Roman civilization, from the
beginnings of Rome in the eighth century BC through the reign of Constantine (306-337
AD). Material remains provide a crucial and often highly evocative window onto the
spectacular rise and subsequent evolution of the Roman Empire and its constituent
cultures. We will consider the evolution of Roman art and architecture (chiefly sculpture,
mosaics, and painting, as well as ‘minor arts’ such as jewelry, household items and
coins/medallions) not only in stylistic and iconographical terms, but also as an index of
broader and more systemic changes in Roman society over the long term. The issues
which our study of Roman art and architecture will allow us to confront include: stateformation and empire building; ‘Romanization’; ethnicity and identity in a multicultural
empire; and the role of religion (including the rise of Christianity) in Roman society.
ARTH 626
Modern Art III
Max Weintraub
Tuesdays 7:00 – 9:40 pm
This course focuses on European and American art since 1945, tracing the complex
legacy of high modernist art and theory and the divergent paths taken in art up to the
contemporary moment. Examining select but exemplary artists, critics and theorists, this
class will situate the important themes of art and art criticism since 1945 within
contemporaneous cultural, philosophical and theoretical developments. Each week will
be structured thematically while adhering to a loosely chronological progression. Some of
the key topics that will be covered include Greenbergian formalism, Appropriation art,
Performance and Video art, Postmodern strategies of remembrance and memorialization,
Identity Politics, Institutional Critique and Globalization.
ARTH 635
Venetian Painting of the Golden Age
Elinor Richter
Thursdays 4:00-6:40
This lecture course will focus on the great age of Venetian painting from the late
fifteenth- through the sixteenth-centuries. Venice at this time remained the sole
independent city-state in central and northern Italy governed by a doge from the patrician
class and an elected senate. Venetian colorito also represented the first direct challenge
to the primacy of Florentine drawing, or disegno. Genres examined will include
portraiture, landscape, and the altarpiece with the emphasis placed on the great
horizontal, narrative tableaux that decorated the churches, private palaces and scuole
(charitable lay confraternities) of the city. These impressive narrative cycles, devoted to
Sts. Ursula, George, Mark, Roch, and even San Giobbe (Job), offer up splendid
panoramic urban vistas filled with the pageantry, diplomacy, and ceremony that are
unique to La Serenissima. Utilizing a contextual approach, these cycles will be examined
within the artistic, social and historical conventions of Renaissance Venice. We will also
concentrate on the ornamentation of the great Palladian-like villas scattered throughout
the terra firma. An examination of the techniques of Venetian painting, including the
study of new glazes, will help to demonstrate why many scholars consider Titian to be
the greatest oil painter of the Renaissance. Artists featured include Carpaccio, the Bellini
(Jacopo, Gentile, and Giovanni), Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese
Requirements include class participation, a final exam, and a research paper.
ARTH 734 Theory and Criticism: Aesthetics, Theory, Curating and Criticism
A Combined Art History and Studio Seminar
Professors: Valerie Jaudon and Joachim Pissarro
(Both professors will lead each seminar.)
Room 203, MFA Building, 205 Hudson, Tuesday 4:00-6:40
This class will be limited to 12 Art History MA and 12 Studio MFA students. Each art
historian will be paired with an artist as a “dialectical duo.” A goal of this course is to
encourage structured dialogue between both disciplines.
The First Half
The first six weeks of the semester will focus on principle moments in the history of
aesthetics (and various anti-aesthetics) from the 18th century until today. This
portion of the course will consist of a concentrated program of readings and
presentations in a seminar format. Texts will be by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Adorno, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Mattick, Rancière, Bourriaud and
Groys, among others. A seven-page paper will be due at the end of the semester.
The Second Half
In the second half of the semester each artist should be prepared with enough
artwork for a small, curated solo exhibition. The exhibitions, organized by the MA
and MFA teams, will be installed in the small Gallery (room 203) in the MFA
Building. Each exhibition will be accompanied by a panel presentation, and will
include a statement by the artist, an essay by the art historian, a review by a critic,
and critique from the class. The MA and MFA teams will, in turn, assume different
roles in the preparation of each exhibition. Everyone therefore will be involved as a
curator, a writer and a critic. The exhibitions and presentations, two each class,
should attempt to incorporate material covered during the first half of the semester.
ARTH 734
Theory and Criticism
Considine
Thursdays 4:00 – 6:40 pm
This course will cover classic theoretical texts that are important for the methodologies of
art history and for art practice.
ARTH 7801Q
Institutional Critique
Max Weintraub
Wednesdays 4:00 – 6:40 pm
This course examines the history of artistic practices that reflect critically on their own
place within art institutions and those artists and art theorists who interrogate the social
spaces and function of art. This class aims to trace the development of institutional
critique as an artistic concern from the 1960s to the present, considering both
artistic precedents from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Topics to be covered
include: the museum's or gallery's role in exhibiting and conferring status to artworks, the
critique of the artist as the maker of original artworks, the relationship between critical art
practices and social movements in Europe, China, America and elsewhere, and the
current conditions for politicized critical practice in the twenty-first century.
The class will consider a broad range of theorists and artists who have developed and
extended the genre of institutional critique, including artists both familiar and
unfamiliar: Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson, Renée Green, and Christian Phillip
Muller, Cildo Meireles, Thomas Struth, Ai WeiWei, Xu Bing, Double Fly Art
Center, Marcel Duchamp, Hans Haacke, Banksy, Rikrit Tiravaneja, Guerrilla Girls,
Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Robert Smithson, Adrian Piper, Gran Fury and
Krzysztof Wodiczko.
ARTH 7801R
Post-1945 Japanese Art and Architecture: Artists and
Architects in Collaboration
Yasufumi Nakamori
Fridays 3:30 – 6:20 pm
This course examines artistic collectivism and collaborations found among artists and
architects in post-1945 Japan in the context of the avant-garde and experimentalism.
Examining art and architecture, realized or unrealized, the course will cover a range of
artistic production that is critically engaged with ideas of Japan-ness, modernity, and the
West, and defining what it meant to be both modern and Japanese in the postwar era. The
course will explore how these artists, photographers, and architects were both in
dialogue, with the practice of collectivism, with intellectuals and mass in Japan and on
the world stage. Students will be expected to conduct in-depth research on an artist or
architect collective for their research papers.
ARTH 7801S
17th Century French Art & Architecture
DeBeaumont
Mondays 4:00 pm – 6:40 pm
Course description TBA
ARTH 780.08
The Artist’s Institute
Alex Kitnick
Thursdays 7:00 – 9:40 pm
Each semester The Artist’s Institute dedicates itself to the work of one artist. Programs
are put on and a class is taught. The classroom component seeks to extract a handful of
themes from the artist’s practice that might help us better understand contemporary art
and culture at large. Assignments include written work as well the creation of events.
More information can be found at http://theartistsinstitute.org.
ARTH 780.14
Curatorial Methods
Instructor TBA
Tuesdays 4:00 – 6:40 pm
This seminar proposes an in-depth examination of the curatorial process and introduces
contemporary perspectives and approaches to exhibition-making, with a focus on
epistemology and the nature of “knowledge” in art. The class is supported by historical
references to landmark exhibitions, theoretical readings, visits to museum and gallery
exhibitions, and presentations by visiting curators and artists. Students consider to what
extent an exhibition---with its themes, politics, juxtapositions, experiments, and
pedagogies---can be a site for knowledge production, and the nature of the exhibition
experience.
ARTH 780.72
Special Topic: A Lesson in Looking: Developing a Narrative of
Art of the 20th Century
William Agee
Thursdays 7:00 – 9:40 pm
In this seminar, we will slow down and hone in: each class will be devoted to a single
work of art. We will focus on art of the 20th century, starting with Matisse’s The Red
Studio of 1911, and then consider work by artists including but not limited to Stuart
Davis, Piet Mondrian, Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper
Johns, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Robert Smithson, and Maya Lin. Weekly discussions
will be based on the work of art and selected readings. Over the course of the semester,
we will develop one possible narrative (there are many) of how art progressed throughout
the early- to late-20th century. In addition to weekly class attendance and participation,
students will be responsible for an independent research paper and visits to local art
institutions.
ARTH 780.88
Topics in Ancient Egyptian Art and Architecture
Edward Bleiberg
Mondays 7:00 – 9:40 pm
This course explores problems in understanding ancient Egyptian art and architecture
from pre-history through the end of Egypt’s New Kingdom about 1075 B.C.E. The
course proceeds chronologically beginning approximately 3500 B.C.E. with questions
about the origins of Egyptian art. The problems addressed in class concern typical art
historical issues such as royal versus middle class patronage, the nature of Egyptian style,
and the emergence of Egyptian iconography in various periods. The course concludes
with discussions of the antiquities market, Egyptian collections in museums, and issues of
cultural patrimony.
OFFERED AT THE GRADUATE CENTER (2 seats available):
ART 83000 Selected Topics in Medieval Art and Architecture: The Reliquary
Effect
Cynthia Hahn
Tues., 11:45 a.m.-1:45 p.m.
If the reliquary can be said to be a container, a box, it is akin to the gift box. As it
performs its function of presentation, it is erased in the “presence” of the relic. Thus,
precisely as the medieval reliquary is materiality glorified, sparkling silver, gold and
gems, it simultaneously denies its own existence, standing only as a setting or context for
the staging of the relic. Such a theatrical ‘reliquary effect’ makes use of a number of
strategies—viewer involvement, the exploration of text-image relationships and visual
effects (and opacities), the creation of meaningful spaces and controlled POV, and the
exploitation of materials. We will consider reliquaries from the early to late middle ages,
as well as touch on those from other periods and cultures. Requirements will include:
weekly readings and discussion, museum visits, student presentations and papers.
Suggested Reading: Cynthia Hahn, Strange Beauty, Penn State Press, 2012.